Switchfoot

Jon Foreman: Vocals, songwriter, guitar

Tim Foreman: Bass, backing vocals

Jerome Fontamillas: Guitar, keys, backing vocals

Drew Shirley: Guitar

Chad Butler: Drums

(San Diego, California) “Why can’t we keep it together?”“Oh! Gravity.”

After listening to this new release by Switchfoot I realized something that I had never realized before. This power driven rock-band is the Bob Dylan of our time, the group that is most often bringing today’s real questions to the conscience of modern day America. Really; I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this while listening to their past projects, but it just struck me while I was listening to “Circles”; which by the by is my favorite song on Switchfoot’s latest contribution “Oh! Gravity”

I am not minimizing the macro issues that Hollywood throws its weight behind. Even though I have a hard time taken many celeb’s seriously. It’s just that Jon and the rest of the guys in Switchfoot seem to be asking the real-life questions in their songs. The questions, that when finally answered, can really make a difference to you and I.

It reminds me of a story I heard:

There was a young boy named Johnny who was getting in his Daddy’s way around the house, so good ol Dad thought he would give his son a project that would keep him out of his hair for a while. He went to the closet and brought out a puzzle that was a map of the world with 100’s of pieces and he said, “Johnny, after you finish the puzzle you and I are going to go out and play some baseball.”

Now to a young guy trying to get his Dad’s attention the puzzle became a project that deserves some attention, so he got right to it. Some short time later Johnny walked in and said, “Dad I’m done with the puzzle lets play some baseball!”

With a very shocked look on his face, his Dad looked at the puzzle and asked Johnny how he was able to complete it so quickly. He said, “It was simple Dad, there is a picture of a man on the back of the puzzle and when I got the man right, the world was right.”

“We’ve always used music as a vehicle to explore our own questions and frustrations,” says Switchfoot singer/songwriter/guitarist Jon Foreman of the band’s new album, Oh! Gravity. Oh! Gravity. is Switchfoot’s sixth studio album, their third for Columbia Records. After 2003’s double-platinum selling, The Beautiful Letdown, and another gold selling album, Nothing Is Sound, Foreman sums it all up by saying, “I’m in therapy and I write songs. It’s all an attempt to try to come to terms with reality.”

The San Diego-based band has often combined a spiritual bent with a critique of some of modern society’s hypocrisies on songs like the Top 5 singles “Dare You to Move” and “Meant to Live,” as well as such tracks as “Politicians” and “Happy is a Yuppie Word” from their last album, 2005’s Nothing is Sound.

Produced by U.K. vet Tim Palmer (Tin Machine, Pearl Jam, The Cure, Mother Love Bone, U2), Oh! Gravity. expands Switchfoot’s sonic palette while at the same time dealing with social issues on songs like the alt-country blues of the song, “Dirty Second Hands,” in which Foreman sings of the dehumanization that comes with technology (“With an army of me/We invent our own enemies/Man verses machine”).

Other politically motivated songs include the title track’s generational appeal for love, peace and understanding (“Sons of my enemies/Why can’t we seem to keep it together?”), “American Dream,” with its biting truth, “When success is equated with excess/The ambition for excess wrecks us” and “Awakening,” about trying to recover the innocence of a child in the midst of an ever-harsher reality. Their A&R exec, Grammy-winning producer Steve Lillywhite, helped the band achieve the song’s Police-like world beat and epic, wide-screen scope.

“I feel like I get born-again a lot,” says Foreman about the song. “I feel like I can easily drift into being dead as well. There’s a crusty shell we get as we get older that shuts us off from being blissfully oblivious. We’ve all been hurt. It’s a way of portraying the thing we often try to protect and hide—our innocence—as a strength.”

The group was founded in 1996 by Jon and his brother Tim, along with Chad on drums as Chin Up. After only a handful of shows, they were signed by Charlie Peacock to re:think Records as “Switchfoot,” a surfing term meaning to shift your feet on the board to take a new stance facing the opposite direction.

In 2003, the band was signed by Columbia Records, which along with Sparrow Records put out The Beautiful Letdown, selling two million albums in the U.S. alone and producing two Top 10 pop and Modern Rock singles, “Meant to Live” and “Dare You to Move.” Last year, the band released Nothing is Sound, which debuted at #3 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart, and promptly went gold, yielding the radio hit “Stars.”

Coming off a pair of hit records, the band approached their new album, Oh! Gravity., with a quiet confidence and a desire for musical growth. Their first move was hooking up with veteran U.K. producer Tim Palmer.

“He was just a great person to come along and assist us with the goal we were attempting to achieve,” says Jon. “A good producer doesn’t project his dreams upon you. He’s a good listener more than anything else, and that was what Tim brought to the sessions.”

Switchfoot’s expanding musical scope can be heard on the sawing alt-country of “Head Over Heels,” the exotic instrumentation and Middle Eastern flavor of “Circles,” the REM-esque pulse of “4:12,” the lush Brit-pop melodies of “Yesterdays,” the Echo and the Bunnymen/Smiths influenced “Burn Out Bright” and Motown sound of “Amateur Lovers.”

“We were listening to a lot of Motown Records at the time,” explains Jon. “I guess whenever white guys try to play soul music; it comes out sounding like the Stones.”

After all the success and the rewards, Foreman insists he’s not feeling any pressure to top his band’s superb track record, but is coolly confident about the new album.

“It can kill the art worrying about how a record’s going to do,” he says. “For us, success is making music that is gratifying to you. The break-even point for the record that my band made back in high school was selling 300 copies. To us, that was success.”

With new songs like “Faust” and “4:12,” which question the world’s material obsessions, Foreman admits rock stardom is a double-edged sword with which he’s still grappling: “It’s that mixed drink you have to pour out so you can start with the pure stuff. And go back to the reason you loved music to begin with. We took a chance on this record, not to sound selfish, but to make something for ourselves. What other people think can’t change our minds about these songs. And that’s a good feeling. Because either you believe in it or you don’t.”

Oh! Gravity. is good enough to make a true believer of anyone.